Binita Jaiswal By Express News Service CHENNAI : After gaining the prestigious Institutions of Eminence (IoE) tag, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) is now focussing to add more foreign students and faculty members to its campus.Officials in IIT-M said the institute is chalking out a special strategy to attract more students from overseas. It has decided to organize outreach and awareness programs in reputed universities across the globe, to attract high-performing students. The institute will also promote its centres of excellence along with research and innovation carried out by different departments, to draw foreign students to IIT-M for research activities. Mahesh Panchagnula, dean (International and Alumni relations) of IIT-M, said the presence of foreign students and faculty members is necessary on the campus, in order to make it more diverse. It will also help in improving the global rankings of the institute, he said. Many faculty members of IITM have been co-authoring multiple research papers for different journals with foreign academicians. The institute aims to attract such foreign faculty members, to take up full-time work with the institute, said an official from IITM. “We participate in different education fairs organised overseas, but now we aim to intensify the process. In such fairs, we will also publicise about the fellowships provided by the institute and the Centre for foreign students,” said Panchagnula. Presently, there are over 100 foreign students on the IITM campus but authorities have plans to increase the figure significantly by next year. As per the IoE scheme, IITM will receive a fund of `1000 crore for a period of five years from the Centre and the institute aims to utilize it in improving its infrastructure to accommodate foreign students and faculty and improve its research activities. IITM officials said as the undergraduate course admission structure is done on basis of national entrance test, the prime focus now will be to attract post-graduate and PhD students from abroad. IIT-M, CII to promote green start-ups Chennai: The Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have signed a memorandum of understanding to nurture and promote innovative green start-ups across the country, said a statement issued by the institute.

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